Good timing - the titan arum at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh is about to flower! My partner manages the Twitter account (in the persona of the plant itself) and I've just been bribed with pizza to give him a lift back to work tonight in case it opens up :)<p><a href="https://twitter.com/TitanArumRBGE" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/TitanArumRBGE</a><p>Here's some more info on the carefully-managed conditions required to get the plant to thrive:<p><a href="https://www.rbge.org.uk/news/amorphophallus-titanum/background-and-history/" rel="nofollow">https://www.rbge.org.uk/news/amorphophallus-titanum/backgrou...</a>
Great Latin name: Amorphophallus titanium: "giant misshapen phallus"<p>Perhaps I do not have the details correct, but I was told this story: Kew Gardens had one of these flower in their greenhouse many years ago, when they were very unusual in "captivity". Another botanical garden (perhaps the one in St. Louis) subsequently was able to get one to flower, and the bloom was quite a bit larger. They printed up T-shirts that said "My Amorphophallus is bigger than yours"
A corpse flower recently bloomed at the Denver Botanic Gardens [0]. I saw it, but unfortunately it had already wilted. I did not notice much of a smell. BTW, if you happen to be in the area, the Denver Botanic Gardens is a great way to spend an afternoon [1].<p>[0] <a href="https://www.denverpost.com/2022/06/17/corpse-flower-denver-botanic-gardens-2022-tickets/" rel="nofollow">https://www.denverpost.com/2022/06/17/corpse-flower-denver-b...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://www.botanicgardens.org/york-street" rel="nofollow">https://www.botanicgardens.org/york-street</a>
I can imagine why it's called corpse flower. I went on a backpacking trip through a rainforest in Thailand. There is similar flower there that's giant and smells like rotting flesh. They are quite impressive to see in person!<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafflesia" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafflesia</a>
During the period when the corm produces a flower rather than a leaf, does the flower do any photosynthesizing, or does the energy to construct the flower come completely from the corm's stores? Wouldn't it need to photosynthesize just to fix the carbon to build the flower? (My understanding is that almost all the mass of plants comes from water and from carbon dioxide in the air, with the soil contributing mostly just trace minerals.)
I am reminded of the stinkhorn, a mushroom which also smells like a corpse and which also has a phallus shape. I'm fortunate to have never smelled the corpse flower, but I have seen it. I am not so fortunate to have never smelled stinkhorns, however.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phallaceae" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phallaceae</a>
Here's the livestream for the one in my hometown's botanical garden: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1tP69m3t90" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1tP69m3t90</a>
Tangentially, Sumatra and western Sumatra in particular are pretty interesting. They have possibly the best curry in Indonesia (beef rendang), different linguistic groups such as the Minangkabau[0], and just northwest off the coast they have one of the best natural surf breaks in the world.[1] A flooded volcano caldera to the north was a major point on the hippy trail in the 1970s[2], and one of the most impressive taxidermy museums on earth lies in Medan.[3] Critical in the historic interchange of ideas between Arabia, South and East Asia which formed the uniquely Indo-Chinese basis for Southeast Asian history, elsewhere on Sumatra they still have unexcavated ancient cities surpassing the scale of Angkor Wat.<p>[0] Whose Wikipedia I had a small part in approving: <a href="https://min.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laman_Utamo" rel="nofollow">https://min.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laman_Utamo</a> [1] <a href="http://www.visitniasisland.com/surfing/" rel="nofollow">http://www.visitniasisland.com/surfing/</a> [2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Toba" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Toba</a> [3] <a href="http://www.rahmatgallery.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.rahmatgallery.com/</a>
We had one bloom in San Diego last fall, and I was very excited to smell something super pungent. It kinds of smelled like wet dirt, which was not much different than any other time inside an indoor greenhouse. It looked amazing, and was worth going just for that, but the smell was very underwhelming.
there was a rare triplet bloom in Chicago but it was closed to the public due to COVID :(<p><a href="https://www.chicagobotanic.org/titan/velvet_queen" rel="nofollow">https://www.chicagobotanic.org/titan/velvet_queen</a>
If one of these blooms near you, it's worth checking out! I can't speak to whether or not it stinks like a corpse, but I stuck my head down in there and it was certainly reminiscent of a juicy dumpster on a hot day.
I don’t particularly care for The Huntington. It is an extraordinary place that unfortunately came off as greedy. Entry is $25 per person. They have a nine figure endowment.<p>Perhaps they over reached on budget and needed a way to balance the books? It might also be priced like that to keep the rabble out. If it walks like elitism, and talks like elitism, etc.<p>It’s a shame — it really is an otherworldly achievement. One of the finest botanical gardens in the world.